Games coming out in February 2017

Alright, January was kinda quiet (still a couple releases upcoming and some that I’m playing in preparation for review), but soon we’re getting lots of stuff coming out. Hopefully I can cover a lot of stuff, we’ll see. I’ve been wanting to make this blog a bit more lively and I think I’ve been doing a bit better with it of late.

So February… 3 PS4 releases (2 exclusive), 9-ish multiplats, a mobile release, a PC release and a 3DS release. Surprising amount of stuff for the PS4 once again, that’s nice and very unlike the PS4.

So let’s go and see what’s up!

Usual disclaimer: This includes either games I’m interested in, games that may be/become popular and random stuff in-between… Basically anything I feel bears mentioning. Probably missing stuff because game companies are shit about announcing release dates nowadays (and good at delaying games near release). Indies in particular are kinda random, or bad at making their games known (I get that it’s hard, but if I don’t see anything about your game before it comes out, I can’t very much highlight it). So if there’s no indie games here, it’s pretty normal. I won’t spend hours that I could be playing games watching videos for indie games I have no interest in.

PS4 RELEASES

Nioh02/09
This is a kinda Dark Souls-ish, Onimusha-inspired action RPG that looks really interesting. I played one of the demos and I kinda sucked at it, but I had fun with it. I’m pretty excited to try this one out.

Malicious Fallen02/21
Malicious was a pretty cool boss rush game on PS3, which got a port on Vita with more content. This is yet another port of it, with even more content. Cool I guess. Pretty sure I reviewed the original release. Not bored enough to find that review.

Horizon Zero Dawn02/28
This is yet another generic open-world game that seems to revolve around sidequests and picking up stuff, but more importantly for me it has robot dinosaurs… so as generic as it may seem I will give it a chance. It sounds like a cool game on that alone. Hopefully it is. The combat seems to have interesting ideas.

MULTIPLATFORM RELEASES

Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 – Road to Boruto02/03 (PC?, PS4, Xbone)
So this is an expansion to Ultimate Ninja Storm 4, but with its own full-blown retail release. Kinda odd. I stopped playing this series after the first game but it was pretty good.

For Honor02/14 (PC, PS4, Xbone)
This is supposed to be a semi-realistic hack n’ slash weapon-based team-focused fighting game (with a war/king of the hill style to it, at least in the video I saw). You choose the directions in which you’ll block or attack, and there’s a good handful of offensive and defensive options. There’s weaklings covering the battlefield that you kill in one hit, but they’re not really the focus here. I wasn’t interested in this when it was shown at E3 twice, but separate gameplay from a beta version did look pretty fun. This goes on the maybe pile.

Sniper Elite 402/14 (PC, PS4, Xbone)
I played Sniper Elite 2. I found it interesting with the sniper-based stealth gameplay, but I found it really hard to be stealthy with a loud ass sniper rifle. It felt like I was found pretty easily and hiding after that was really complicated to me. Maybe I just sucked at it. I will say it was pretty good though.

Berserk and the Band of the Hawk02/21 (PC, Vita, PS4)
It’s a Warriors game with Berserk characters. I don’t really need to say more about it, Guts clearing the shit out of armies with his big ass sword. I’m very okay with that. I’ve been wanting to play more of these Warriors games recently, hopefully I don’t burn out on them (getting at least 2 this year, hopefully 3… please Squeenix). The Vita version is digital-only.

Halo Wars 202/21 (PC, Xbone)
Huh. You know, I didn’t play the first one. It sounded weird because of its 360 exclusivity and RTS usually being bad on console. Looking at gameplay it looks… okay. Seems like a pretty standard RTS. Might as well just play Starcraft 2, really. (the game box uses the fake term “console exclusive”, for shame Microsoft)

Ys Origin02/21 (Vita, PS4)
This was previously on PC. It’s a prequel to the Ys series. Usually these games are pretty solid, so there you go.

Sublevel Zero Redux02/21 (PS4, Xbone)
This is a “6 degrees of movement” spaceship game that is very similar to the classic game Descent. It’s rogue-lite so you find new equipment and ships and stuff, and if you die you restart completely (but you unlock stuff)… Just play it on PC. It’s a really fun game, but I wouldn’t play something like this on console.

Torment: Tides of Numenera02/28 (PC, PS4, Xbone)
I’m not super familiar with this. It was a big kickstarter success apparently. Quickly looking at videos it reminds me of classic top-down computer-style RPGs of old like Baldur’s Gate and such, but with strategic turn-based combat. Could be interesting.

MOBILE RELEASE

Fire Emblem Heroes02/02 (Android, iOS)
It’s one of those animu Gacha games, but featuring Fire Emblem characters and gameplay. Get random characters, play simplified Fire Emblem maps, level up characters, pay money if you want more stuff faster… I usually give up on these after minutes of playing, but the gameplay here does seem fun. I’ll try it out. I do find it to be a huge missed opportunity on Nintendo’s end that there doesn’t seem to be permadeath.

3DS RELEASE

Poochy & Yoshi’s Woolly World02/03
Yoshi’s Woolly World was a fun platformer (that wasn’t as good as the first Yoshi’s Island but it had cool ideas). So this should be fun too since it’s the same game. That Poochy yarn amiibo is tempting, but I see no reason to buy this game again outside of that.

PC RELEASE

Rosenkreuzstilette02/03This is why I go deep into release lists, to find things like this. I had no idea this was getting a legitimate US release. This is actually an old ass game. 10 years old, to be clear. It’s pretty cool. Very anime-inspired platformer that plays like Mega Man, with a kinda Castlevania aesthetic, but with really crazy boss battles and references to a pile of other games. Worth checking out.